An unknown number of years ago, disaster struck humanity. What soon followed was a wave of chaos, wars, disease and terrorism leading to the End of the World as We Know It. To protect itself from the Sterility Plague, humanity began to apply genetic material from the animal kingdom onto themselves, leading to the creation of beings known as the "Others", humans with animal features. Humanity is now living in the "Age of Dusk". While the society has managed to recover, barely any documents have survived from the past and understanding of modern technology has been lost.
Leon Laird and his roommate Lucia Haynes are running a diner near the town of Sagumi Fransico in the arid deserts of the former United States. For them, the current state of the world or the events that lead up to it don't matter one bit as they are too busy running their business. While on a delivery run to they find a girl named Aisia Mayfield sleeping in the side of the road.
KARAKARA is a Visual Novel developed by calme and published by Sekai Project that was successfully funded through a Website/Indiegogo campaign. The game was released on July 27th, 2016. The sequel, KARAKARA 2 was released on November 11th, 2017.
Not to be confused with Kira☆Kira.
KARAKARA provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Mari is a capable ninja from the start, while Aisia quickly develops into one when Mari begins teaching her, thanks to her Instant Expert ability.
- After the End: So long after the disaster that most people don't know what even caused said disaster.
- Apocalypse How: The disaster was a Class 2 scenario; society has managed to recover from the destruction by the start of the story, but humankind now exists in much reduced numbers.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The second VN, since it deals with kidnappers by contrast to the light-hearted Slice of Life nature of the first.
- Charles Atlas Superpower
- Cliffhanger: KARAKARA 2 ends with Leon receiving a message that Cullen has been kidnapped.
- Dysfunction Junction: Besides of just attracting all sorts of weirdness around him, Leon also seems to attract other people with troubled troubled pasts. Every girl on Leon's harem with the exception of Lucia has been shunned by the society in some way and has own tragic backstory to tell that we get to discover overtime.
- Exotic Extended Marriage: Polygamy has become a standard.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Leon faced much discrimination in his youth when he was living in the orphanage because he doesn't have a tail or four ears like most humans and Cullen still warns him that he should be careful if he were to visit the town because of this.
- The Generic Guy: Lucia is the only person living in the diner who isn't somehow unusual in the society she lives in, nor does she seem to have a traumatic backstory like the rest of the cast.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: All of Mari's knowledge about ninjas, including her skills.
- Iyashikei: Despite the post-apocalyptic backdrop, the story is mostly just this.
- Language Drift: English has died out in United States in the aftermath of the disaster and has developed into a new language called that combines elements of English and Japanese.
- Lost Technology: Advanced technology from the past, or "relics" as they are called, are scattered around the world. The trope is also slightly deconstructed as while people know how to operate it, nobody knows how to fix them when they break.
- Magical Realism: Unusually for this trope, the setting is future post-apocalyptic earth, rather than a past or contemporary setting.
- Missing Mom
- Mundane MacGuffin Person: Leon becomes a target of human traffickers in KARAKARA 2 because the lack of young males makes him extremely valuable.
- Nice Guy: All of the girls as well as Leon himself are friendly and altruistic people.
- Noodle Incident: What actually happened during the disaster or what caused it is never discussed in great detail nor do the characters know much of anything about it.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Aisia doesn't look much like a vampire, and in fact hides that she's one throughout the near-entirety of the first novel.
- Police Are Useless: Because there simply aren't enough of them to go around. The Vigilante Corps are heavily overworked as is and they can't spare too many resources to look after Leon or try to catch the people who attempted to kidnap him.
- Slice of Life: Much of the story is just following the casts daily lives.
- Superhuman Trafficking: Touched upon in the second novel.
- Weirdness Magnet
